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PC Shipments Are Slowly Recovering
mrspoonsi sends this news from TechCrunch:
Over the past two years, the growing popularity of mobile devices has eaten into PC sales. A new report by Gartner, however, shows that shipments may continue to enjoy a very slow but steady uptick this year as tablet sales hit a peak. The research firm found that worldwide PC shipments in the fourth quarter of 2014 grew one percent year-over-year, the first increase since 2012. In the U.S., PC shipments increased 13.1 percent year-over-year, the fastest increase in four years, thanks to holiday purchases. Inexpensive laptops (about $200 to $300), thin and light notebooks, and laptops with a detachable screen helped drive growth. Lenovo continued to be the number one PC maker in terms of shipment volume, with a 19.4 percent marketshare.
I would guess that's a component, but I suspect some of it was also just an issue of timing.
I work in IT servicing a lot of small businesses, and from what I've seen over the years, it seems like most businesses had gotten into the habit of buying new computers every few years. Both the hardware and software were improving quickly and drastically, and it made sense to buy a new computer every 3 years or so.
And then around... I don't know, 2006, when it came time for the 3 year upgrade cycle, a lot of businesses looked at the computer they already had and said, "Meh... this is still doing what I need it to do. I don't see there being much value in spending another $1,500 for a new computer."
And that continued, one year after the other. In 2010, they were still looking at some of their computers from 2005 and saying, "I know it's an old computer, but it still does everything we need it to do. I'm not going to spend money I don't need to."
But then in the last couple years, we hit a couple of milestones. First, a lot of those computers are now getting to be around 10 years old. In computer terms, "7 years old" sounds bad, but it sounds to the decision-makers like something they can live with, whereas "10 years old" apparently sounds like it ought to be replaced.
The other big milestone was that Microsoft dropped support for Windows XP, which means all of the old Windows XP machines either need to be replaced or updated to Windows 7 or Windows 8. Upgrading an old, outdated machine with no warranty is often not really worth the trouble, and so the need to move to a new version of Windows was the last straw for all those old machines that should have been replaced a few years ago.
So honestly, if I had to guess, I'd guess that you're going to see an uptick in laptop/desktop PC purchases over 2014-2015, and then you're going to see it drop off again. Once most of those old 10-year-old Windows XP machines are replaced, sales will go back down. But I also don't see them stopping anytime soon. Tablets are not going to be a real replacement for business use-- unless you're talking about something like the Microsoft Surface, where it's really just a laptop without a keyboard.
Very few people have any need to upgrade.
This.
The only really interesting thing to happen over the past five years or so is SSDs. And they're a drop-in, not a 'buy/build a new PC!'
I say this as someone who primarily uses my PC for gaming, and who just blew around $1k. Bought the entry hardcore-level video card du jour for $350. i7-4790K and new motherboard. New SSD and bulk drive, because my old drive was dying. It's cool and all, but worth it only because I'm living the life of an IT worker and making more money than I can spend. It isn't worth it because $1k has gained me very little performance over my previous three year old system. Certainly not the sort of performance boost that $1k (or even $500) would have bought you back in the old days.
PC tech is stagnating. It's been years, and Intel's processors have devolved into incremental upgrades rather than astonishing leaps and bounds of performance glory. AMD isn't innovating shit. DDR4 has been around forever, tech-wise at least - and nobody but the truly hardcore have been using it. Nor will they for another year or two. Video cards? Video cards are being pushed solely by crazy loons buying and overclocking panels from Korea. If you, like 99.9% of people, don't do that, you have no real need to Crossfire or SLI up half a dozen cards.
Now imagine instead of chasing frames at 2560x1600, we're talking about the average user on a - let's be generous and say 24" monitor at 1080p. They're Facebooking, Doing some word processing. Running shitty javascript in their browsers. Okay, that last one might be a reason to upgrade - but not really.
Not if you purchased a decent PC anywhere within the last five years.
As for mobile, it's a red herring. Laptops didn't kill the PC, and neither will mobile. Mobile compliments the PC. If anything, mobile is doing damage to laptops. And I know - technically, laptops are PCs - but nobody in the real world is talking about laptops when they say "PC".
I think PC gaming went first. So many of the genres I used to play disappeared or got dumbed down. And it was always the latest games that drove my upgrade cycle. Something simple like Minecraft doesn't require this.
If I were in the PC hardware biz, I'd look into owning a game company on the side that focuses on the most beautiful, resource intensive games I could muster.